Die Einträge der Rubrik: 'Allgemein'

If you live in a city like Berlin, you have a soundtrack for your every day, a song for your every move and a riff for every conversation you will have in your head. Because whether you’re crossing the road, eating a sandwich from a street vendor or taking the train, there’s always the voice of an artist coming from nearby. Street musicians or “buskers” are a recognized institution in this music metropolis of a city. And no matter how busy you are, it’s still somehow hard to pass by and ignore the loud amplifiers, echoing voices and open hats of these buskers. Although there are so many buskers scattered everywhere in Berlin that after a while, all their lyrics, songs and faces became jumbled up in your head, there are still some musicians that leave such an impression that once you hear them for even a minute, you end up canceling all your plans and waiting for their entire set to finish. For me that artist was Frederik Konradsen. I will never forget sitting amongst the tourists and locals at Alexanderplatz, swaying to this guy’s music.

He’s more talented than he realises, more charismatic than he knows, humble enough to answer all my questions and has no qualms about travelling to Pakistan to play music. He’s also appeared as a contestant on the first season of X factor Denmark.

How long have you been performing in Berlin? What’s your story?

In September 2011, I took a short holiday to Berlin. At that time, I was living in Copenhagen, Denmark and Berlin was only a short drive (6hours) away. Going there was something I had thought of doing for quite a while. So I started exploring the “busking” scene of Berlin and fell in love with the city immediately. For the next 12 months, I would spend a few weeks from time to time in Berlin, staying at friend’s places or hostels, until I finally rented a room in Berlin in August 2012. Now I am no longer living in Copenhagen, and have taken all the necessary steps to become a Berliner.

What do you think about the Berlin street music scene?

The Berlin music scene is great. People are very appreciative of art and music. As compared to Copenhagen, Berlin is a huge city with a lot of places to play. Berlin even has a subway which is playable, but I have yet to try it. I am most comfortable above ground.

Have you played anywhere else in Europe? US?

I have played in Spain, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Italy, United Kingdom, Poland and Sweden. In Italy and Austria, I have participated in street performance festivals. That´s a great experience because you get to meet performers from all over the world, and it is very intense. You can apply online and depending on the festival, they cover your transportation cost and accommodation. There you can play your music and collect money with your “hat”. In 2003, I spend a year traveling around the World. I visited the U.K., Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and the US. I brought my guitar and supported myself by performing in the street and in bars and restaurants. Recently, I have been invited to play in Russia. A festival in Perm and concerts in St. Petersburg.

Have you recorded an album?

After participating in the Danish X-Factor television program in 2008, I released my first album with the title: Home is where the Heart is. In 2012, I released an album in Danish with songs for children which I had composed.

Is music your day job or do you do something else on the side?

Playing music and performing is my only source of income. Have you written original material or do you only do covers? I do compose my own songs and perform them in the street. I am in a transitionary period right now where I am moving from mainly performing cover songs to actually performing my own songs. I have had great success with covers, but now I want to evolve and focus on songwriting.

How much do you get to earn from a day playing on the streets?

The daily “hat” varies a lot from close to nothing to a lot. I have a policy of never letting people know how much money I make. One of two things can happen when talking about money – either people think it´s a lot and they stop donating or they think it´s too little and then the donation turns into “charity”. By combining the street and playing at parties I manage to make a living. I don´t drive a fancy car and I don´t own a Rolex, but I live the life I love and I get to see the world. And for that I am thankful. I like it when the money is taken out of the “equation” For example, I spend time in a penthouse apartment in the middle of Melbourne. After hearing me play someone opened his home to me. Living there would have cost a fortune, but music opened the door for me.

What is the biggest problem you face as a musician?

The biggest problem for me as an artist is the balance between the art and business. The compromises you may or may not have to make in order to “make”it. I have released two albums in Denmark. Been on national television and on tour, and that has shown me how uncomplicated the street can be. I enjoy the touring and the rock and roll part, when it´s happening, but there is so much “stuff” going on besides that. With “stuff” I mean negotiating a contract. Finding out who gets what of what. Choosing whether I should have a manager or not. Which manager to choose and so on. I am a performer. I love performing. I love getting up in the morning, looking out the window to see what the weather is like, getting on my bicycle and hitting the street with my guitar. Returning a few hours later having had fun with a lot of people I just met. There is no marketing, no manager, no contract. Just me, the street and the people I meet.

What do you love most about playing music on the street?

What I love about the street is that it’s real. It´s complete freedom both for me as a performer and the people as my audience. However, long we choose to be together it is based on choice. Pure naked choice. There have not been a poster with a cool photo announcing the concert. No commercial on television saying that I will be there at that time, and telling people how wonderful I am and how great it will be. It is a complete surprise and most of my audience had other plans that day in that moment. They are probably out shopping or on their way to or from work. I am an interruption in their life or routine, and the fact that they stop to enjoy, thrills me and I am very honored. Since people did not stand in line for two days to spend 200 Dollars on a ticket for my show, I trust they will leave the moment they get bored. (some people do…. Leave.)

I’ve heard that Berlin has a structured street music scene whereby each musician gets a certain territory to play at, is this true? Can you give me more details about how the authorities have made it better or worse for musicians? Do you have to pay authorities a certain amount of money to play somewhere?

In the U-bahn – Subway I know you show early in the morning and choose your favourite spot and time. In different cities I know you have to audition to be able to play in the subway. Which can be good and bad. It is great that the city supports the musicians by allowing them to play, and create designated busking spots. Things can turn ugly with the anarchy / freedom of the street, so a certain level of supervision can be fine. However, if you just started playing chances are that you suck, and if you do not get to play because of an audition, you will not get the experience and a chance to improve. But, luckily there are other places you can play. In the street of Berlin there is no supervision from the city in terms of “who gets to play where and when”. They have a policy of the use of amplifiers – which is illegal without a permission. You don´t have to pay in order to play in Berlin, but in Munich I know you have to show at the city hall each day you want to play and buy a permit for 10€.

Who has been your biggest inspiration?

I love swing jazz, and in particular gypsy swing jazz. I am have been influenced by Django Reinhardt, Cab Calloway. I also enjoy Paul Simon and Bob Marley.

Would you like to come to Pakistan and play for the audiences here?

I made it my mission to see the whole world. So yes, Pakistan is included in my mission.

Frederick Konradsen will be in South America from January 16th to February 16th 2013.

There is no other way to say this but Mindy Kaling is awesome! And I’ve been saying that the first time I saw her as Kelly Kapoor on ‚’’The Office’’ pursuing the craziest love-hate relationship with intern Ryan. Her comic timing is absolutely brilliant, her voice is like a cutesy five-year old girls and she’s representing us brown girls on TV pretty well. She’s also a kick ass writer who has not only contributed her comic genius to The Office, but she’s also written a book called ‚’’Is everyone hanging out without me?’.

And if you always thought there was very little airtime given to her on The Office, FOX has finally given Kaling her own TV show called, ‚’’The Mindy project’’ which premiered on September 25, 2012.

Not only does she play the main role, she’s also written the first three episode and produced them.

In the show, Mindy plays this twenty-something, superficial physician working in a private hospital with two scrumptious looking doctors. Mindy herself is obsessed with the perfect fairytale ending but her real love life is far from it.

The show starts with a drunken Mindy standing at her dentist ex-boyfriend’s wedding reception, delivering one of the most embarassingly hilarious toasts ever. And within a few minutes you get to realise that despite her fancy degree, this girl does not have her shit together. But that’s what makes the show even more awkward and fun.

Even better is the fact that a lot of The Office regulars may make guest appearances in the coming episodes. The first epsiode already saw Andy coming in as a blind date for Mindy.

But what makes this show super awesome is the chemistry between macho doctor Danny and Mindy. It’s that explosive, violent, loathesome negative energy whereby both characters constantly keep putting each other down and don’t realise that they’re really into each other.

I think this is the kind of show that has the potential to take over and be more popular, intriguing and funnier than Zooey Deshanel’s New Girl.

When it comes to the narrative of Pakistan shown on the international media, all that usually gets out are sordid images of bearded men angrily burning away American flags, protesting about everything under the sun. On other days, its the yearly floods that leave thousands and thousands of people homeless and hungry that gets some serious international TV air time and some worldwide pity. And when those wonderful things don’t make the cut, its the long list of corrupt politicians smugly travelling all over the world shaking hands with other politicians who steal the international spotlight. But what you never get to see are the still hopeful, incredibly talented and creatively inclined youth of the country who despite their dangerous odds don’t give up on their artistic journeys.

By difficult odds I mean, here’s a country where the majority of people don’t know if they’ll be able to have the next meal. So to assume anyone will be willing to buy music on iTunes no matter how inexpensive it may be, sounds like a joke to most people.

So why are these artists still making music? Why are they pursuing a career that is the least bit lucrative and can even evoke the wrath of extremists?

For some, making satirical or indie music is a form of rebellion against the system. For others, its a spirtual balm when things become too tough to bear. Maybe that’s why the most creative music has actually come from the youth of Peshawar – a city renowned for bomb blasts and Talibanisation.

Here are just a few odds that musicians are facing in Pakistan:

Musicians can’t earn any money online as people are not comfortable with online transactions and using credit cards on the internet. So buying music online is still an alien concept. This is a place where piracy is king and copyrights have no meaning. Add to this the fact that a majority of Pakistani people beleive in a brand of religion where music is assumed to be forbidden (haram). So pursuing it as a full time career is looked down upon by society in general. There are no academies or schools teaching instruments which means all Pakistani musicians do not get formally trained at all and tinker and toil with the instruments until they learn how to play something.

And considering almost every few months a bomb gets blown up somewhere in Pakistan, live gigs with more than 100+ people can’t happen because of the fear of the Talibanised thinkers infiltrating it and setting it all ablaze. While relatively large concerts were previously allowed at universities and educational institutions, they are now less common due to a stampede situation earlier this year at one of the concerts which resulted in more than a few deaths of young students.

So bands have no choice but to upload their music on their Facebook pages, MySpace and YouTube accounts. But the problem comes when every now and then, all these social networks are put on a temporary ban by the government. Quite recently, it was banned because of the ’Innocence of Muslims’ that was uploaded on YouTube. For these struggling artists, this ban means that even the smallest glimmer of hope of them connecting with their fans and sharing their music gets stripped away from them.

And no I’m still not finished with the odds yet.

There’s also the problem of dwindling record labels. According to Hamad Dar, who is behind Pakistan’s most famous music website KoolMuzone‚’’The few record labels which exist seldom sign artists. Only a few times per year and most of these deals are pathetic. They often only meet the recording costs of the album or not even that.’ There is only one indie net label in Pakistan called Mooshy Moo which has three signed artists.

There are thousands of these garage bands playing all over the country but making absolutely no money out of it. Most sustain themselves with a day job. Some are happy with no fame, while others hope to get discovered and get signed on to play on Pakistan’s biggest musical show Coke Studio. If that happens, (and it doesnt happen for more than a handful every season), multionational endorsements give them more than enough to sustain music as a career. Others try to cross borders to India where a thriving music industry welcomes them with open arms. But that means bands have to Bollywoodize (commercialise) their music to the taste and preference of India and many artists are not willing to go that route.

So the only sensible answer one can think of as to why these kids are continuing to pursue music is possibly just for the pure love and passion for it.

Here are some Pakistani indie artists who truly deserve some international attention.

I’ve grown up listening to Nena’s 99 luftballoons but it wasn’t till I came to Berlin that I realised it was such a meaningful song that represented the paranoia of that time. Although it sounds ridiculous now that something as innocent as 99 balloons in the air could cause confusion and start a nuclear war but at a certain time, for certain people and a certain place, it wasn’t a matter of ’if’ nuclear war would happen but a question of ‚’when’ it would happen. And preparing for that possibility was a necessity – not just a precautionary measure.

Nowhere was that possibility more evident and clear than the strategically important yet equally dangerous Berlin. Strategic because as Valdimir I. Lenin put it, ‚’’whoever controlled Berlin, controlled Germany and whoever controlled Germany controlled Europe’’. Dangerous because its strategic importance made all sides eye it.

And so the government on both sides built bunkers to appease the Berliners of the time so that everytime they passed by them on their way to work, they would feel some sort of consolation that if World War 3 were to break, they knew where to run to.

In 1999, an organisation called Berliner Unterwelten Association decided to open up these underground bunkers to the public and through its informative guides told the stories of how these bunkers operated and even exposed the failings of each.

Fast forward to 2012, I’m in Berlin and decide to take their tour through Berlin’s subterranean architechture and see the West Berlin bunkers for myself. Why? Well I’m no histroy buff but it seemed intriguing to see the provisions made during the ‚’hot phase’ of the war and to actually go down underneath the now rubble free streets adorned with slick cafes at every corner and the thumping clubs of Berlin.

I’ve been fascinated with underground tunnels since I saw the Australian horror film‚’’The Tunnel’’ last year about a journalist, camera man and sound technician who set out to uncover what’s underneath Sydney’s underground network of abandoned railway tunnels after homeless people who had been using those tunnels as shelter start disappearing. Long story short, there is something absolutely vicious down there and ends up killing one of them and making another one disappear forever. And although the Berliner Unterwelten promised me from start to finish that all the tours are completely safe, deep inside I was hoping for something freakishly supernatural to happen.

But even if nothing strange happened, just walking through those neon lit creepy stairways leading up to Bunker A which offered protection from radioactive fallout as well as from biological and chemical warfare, was reminescent of a horrible haunted house. Even worse was the possibility that the bunker could only accomodate the first 1318 people who reached it and the doors would be shut for the rest of the city. So if a mother got in and her child was number 1319, the child would be left out to basically die. Considering I run like a girl, its safe to assume I wouldn’t have found a place here if the alarms had ever gone off.

Even if I did find space, the bunker was only equipped to handle people for a maximum of 10 hours. It also had no generator so if the power station was hit, the ventilaltion system would be manually handled. It also had no isolated water supply or storage of food.

The best this bunker could do was ‚’’bridge time’’ until something else was figured out. And to this day, nothing was ever figured out. So if you’re wondering why did the government even bother with spending money building this bunker?

Well, for nothing more than good PR.

Our next stop was a bunker at Pankstrasse station, and after the failings of the first bunker I was happy to know that at this multipurpose bunker you’d probably have better chances of survival. The best thing was that the entire station was itself a bunker that could house 3339 people with beds, food and water for 14 days.

As my tour group stood in the kitchen and opened the cabinets to see the thousands of food bowls and cannisters of pea soup perserved from the time for the people in the bunkers, and pretended to eat with small plastic spoons that were designed in a way that you wouldn’t use them to cut your wrists, this dread and heaviness fell upon us. I didn’t get to see any monsters but imagining the possibility of chemical warfare waging above your head and having just a few hours to survive was scary enough for me.

When the tour guide announced that we were at the end of our tour, I was pretty glad because the paranoia of 99 luftballon had taken over me and the claustrophobia was making me want to run out immediately.

And now each time I pass by Gesundbrunnen or Pankstrasse station, I’m happy that 99 luftballons is just a song and not Germany’s reality.

Before coming to Berlin, vintaging or buying thrift store clothing was not an option for me. In Pakistan, there is a lot of judgement and ridicule for people who so much so as lay their pinky on second hand clothes. Considering the poverty levels of the country, people like to stand apart from the masses by showing off their designer labels and looking as expensive as possible. There is little value seen by Pakistani women in finding a unique one-off piece from another time with its edges slightly worn out picked up from a junkyard sale.

However, a Pakistani woman will treat a snazzy off the shelf Louis Vuitton bag like God. What makes designer clothing for these women even more appealing is the fact that since there are barely any high end designer clothing stores in Pakistan, women have to bring their designer goodies from their travel abroad. So wearing designer clothing not only proves you’re rich in Pakistani society, it also proves you’re well-travelled.

Unfortunately for me, I can’t and never will be able to even afford the welcome mat outside LV. But fortunately for my sake, I’ve found out that I feel no shame in wearing second hand clothing at all. In fact, I love my clothing, just like I like my boys, with a fair bit of history.

And Berlin is pretty much second hand clothing paradise. Everwhere I turn, I find plenty of kooky flea markets and kitschy vintage boutiques. So if you’re broke in Berlin, fashion joints like Colours, flea markets at Treptower park and Mauerpark will help you stretch your every euro until it bleeds and asks for forgiveness.

Here are some tips and lessons I’ve learnt from my vintaging in Berlin.

1. Vintaging is like the girl-version of hunting, except you get to wear it around your neck all the time. It’s also less bloody and cruelty free, so yea me! And just like hunting, for good vintaging you have to stalk your prey for hours, take your time, rummage until you hit a piece that makes you want to run away with it, get married wearing it and have a few babies in it.

2. While vintaging listen to good music. Preferably from the icon you are trying to emulate or the era you want to capture with your clothing. If you listen to some Faces and The Who, it will immediately send you back to the 60s and help you pick out some amazing Mod pieces.

3. Don’t go vintaging just to pick the most normal-est looking pieces you can find! Look for unique patterns and crazy prints. If you come back with anything less than a reindeer sweater that even you’re grandfather wouldn’t be caught dead wearing, you’re not vintaging right!

5. Factor in extra costs. You’re hardly ever going to find pieces that fit you perfectly so taking it to tailor or drycleaning silk pieces is going to add to the final price.

5. Have an image in mind. I usually take with me a colour pallete that inspires me and then instead of buying individual pieces, I concentrating on building one entire look. Once I go home, I match it with some highstreet stuff and find out that more than 5 looks can be created with one article of clothing.

6. Feel goood about yourself. In a world running towards wastage and excessive consumerism, you’re actually choosing the most eco friendly way of shopping.

7. When old people look at you funny take that as a compliment and realise you’re becoming a vintaging expert!

In my short time as an intern in Berlin, one of my favourite things has been experiencing the street musicians of the city up close. For every musician I’ve seen, shitty or exceptionally good, I’ve stood like a mystified tourist in front of them taping their every move and sound with my camera and trying to make them feel like rockstars. I’ve swayed to their music and danced to their drums. To me these people really are the true rockstars of the city. Because it takes a lot of guts to stand in front of a random crowd and play your music.

And when exotic music echoes through a deserted U-Bahn station late at night, streams through the lush trees of Tiergarten and Mauer Park in the early morning and takes over the chitter chatter of the tourists at Alexanderplatz at mid day, it transports every tourist into another world. You no longer need your ipods and your carefully selected playlists that you made back home, because these artists have already offered you a soundtrack to the city.

So when locals (Berliners) pass by street artists without even acknowledging their presence, it really pisses me off.

You see, these entertainers are really important to us tourists because not all of us will get the time to go to the bars and clubs of the city. Not all of us even have the money to spend on bands and entertainers at clubs. So what these people are doing for free (almost) is highly appreciated.

So next time you see a twenty-something girl blocking your way and standing stupified with a camera in front of a street musician, try to understand the magic of that moment.

That jazz musician has made that girl’s day when she’s homesick, and that accordian player has made her feel right at home with his music.

So stand with her in the crowd for a minute and take it all in, because in that moment Berlin doesn’t get any better than that!